Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

Greater New Orleans

Change Region

comments

NTSB: NYC commuter train going too fast at curve before derailment

Train Derailment_Thor.jpg

Cranes salvage the last car from from a train derailment in the Bronx section of New York, Monday, Dec. 2, 2013. Federal authorities began righting the cars Monday morning as they started an exhaustive investigation into what caused a Metro-North commuter train rounding a riverside curve to derail, killing four people and injuring more than 60 others. A second "event recorder" retrieved from the train may provide information on the speed of the train, how the brakes were applied, and the throttle setting, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

YONKERS, N.Y. (AP) -- A
commuter train that derailed over the weekend, killing four passengers,
was hurtling at 82 mph as it entered a 30 mph curve, a federal
investigator said Monday. But whether the wreck was the result of human
error or mechanical trouble was unclear, he said.

Rail experts
said the tragedy might have been prevented if Metro-North Railroad had
installed automated crash-avoidance technology that safety authorities
have been urging for decades.

The locomotive's speed was extracted
from the train's two data recorders after the Sunday morning accident,
which happened in the Bronx along a bend so sharp that the speed limit
drops from 70 mph to 30 mph.

Asked why the train was going so
fast, National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener said:
"That's the question we need to answer."

Weener would not disclose
what the engineer operating the train told investigators, and he said
results of drug and alcohol tests weren't yet available. Investigators
are also examining the engineer's cellphone, apparently to determine
whether he was distracted.

"When I heard about the speed, I gulped," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

Engineers
may not use cellphones while on the train, according to the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs Metro-North.

The
engineer, William Rockefeller, was injured and "is totally traumatized
by everything that has happened," said Anthony Bottalico, executive
director of the rail employees union.

He said Rockefeller, 46, was cooperating fully with investigators.

"He's
a sincere human being with an impeccable record that I know of. He's
diligent and competent," Bottalico said. Rockefeller has been an
engineer for about 11 years and a Metro-North employee for about 20, he
said.

Outside Rockefeller's modest house in Germantown, police
told reporters that at the request of the family any of them who
trespassed would be arrested. Calls to the home went unanswered.

Weener
sketched a scenario that suggested that the train's throttle was let up
and the brakes were fully applied way too late to stave off disaster.

He
said the throttle went to idle six seconds before the derailed train
came to a complete stop -- "very late in the game" for a train going that
fast -- and the brakes were fully engaged five seconds before the train
stopped.

It takes about a quarter-mile to a half-mile to stop a
train going 82 mph, Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Kevin
Thompson said.

Asked whether the tragedy was the result of human
error or faulty brakes, Weener said: "The answer is, at this point in
time, we can't tell."

But he said investigators are unaware of any
problems with the brakes during the nine stops the train made before
the derailment.

The wreck came two years before the federal
government's deadline for Metro-North and other railroads to install
automatic-slowdown technology designed to prevent catastrophes caused by
human error.

Metro-North's parent agency and other railroads have
pressed the government to extend Congress' 2015 deadline a few years
because of the cost and complexity of the Positive Train Control system,
which uses GPS, wireless radio and computers to monitor trains and stop
them from colliding, derailing or going the wrong way.

Steve
Ditmeyer, a former FRA official who teaches at Michigan State
University, said the technology would have monitored the brakes and
would not have allowed the train in Sunday's tragedy to exceed the speed
limit.

"A properly installed PTC system would have prevented this
train from crashing," he said. "If the engineer would not have taken
control of slowing the train down, the PTC system would have."

On
Sunday, the train was about half full, with about 150 people aboard,
when it ran off the rails around 7:20 a.m. while rounding a bend where
the Harlem and Hudson rivers meet. The lead car landed inches from the
water. More than 60 people were injured.

The injured included five police officers who were heading to work, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

Gov.
Andrew Cuomo said Monday the NTSB findings make it clear "extreme speed
was a central cause" of the train derailment. He said his
administration is working closely with the NTSB and when the
investigation concludes he'll make sure "any responsible parties are
held accountable."

The train was configured with its locomotive
pushing from the back instead of pulling at the front. Weener said
that's common and a train's brakes work the same way no matter where the
locomotive is. Ditmeyer said the locomotive's location has virtually no
effect on train safety.

The dead were identified as Donna L.
Smith, 54, of Newburgh; James G. Lovell, 58, of Cold Spring; James M.
Ferrari, 59, of Montrose; and Kisook Ahn, 35, of Queens.

Lovell,
an audio technician who had worked the "Today" show and other NBC
programs, was traveling to Manhattan to work on the Rockefeller Center
Christmas tree, longtime friend Janet Barton said. The tree-lighting
ceremony is Wednesday night.

"He always had a smile on his face
and was quick to share a friendly greeting," ''Today" executive producer
Don Nash said in a message to staffers.

The NTSB has been urging
railroads for decades to install Positive Train Control technology. In
2008, Congress required dozens of railroads, including Metro-North, to
do so by 2015.

The MTA awarded $428 million in contracts in
September to develop the system for Metro-North and its sister Long
Island Rail Road.

But the MTA has asked for an extension to 2018,
saying it faces technological and other hurdles in installing such a
system across more than 1,000 rail cars and 1,200 miles of track.

"This
incident, if anything, heightens the importance of additional safety
measures like that one," said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, of
Connecticut, which is served by Metro-North. "I'd be very loath to be
more flexible or grant more time."

MTA spokeswoman Margie Anders said the agency began planning for a PTC system as soon as the law was put into effect.

"It's not a simple, off-the-shelf solution," she said.

The
derailment came amid a troubled year for Metro-North and marked the
first time in the railroad's 31-year history that a passenger was killed
in an accident.

In May, a train derailed in Bridgeport, Conn.,
and was struck by a train coming in the opposite direction, injuring 73
passengers, two engineers and a conductor. In July, a freight train full
of garbage derailed near the site of Sunday's wreck.